Getting charged with election fraud while fueling bogus allegations of election fraud — that’s the MAGA way.

In the Trump era, it’s not uncommon for Republicans to be charged or even convicted of voter fraud while their conservative movement pushes false — and fundamentally racist — claims of election chicanery. My colleague Steve Benen has covered this trend for years.

We, of course, can’t forget the insurrectionists pardoned by Donald Trump after they fueled a riot at the Capitol premised on lies about voter fraud. Or the Trump allies who agreed to pay up in 2024 after concocting a fraudulent voter suppression scheme.

And earlier this year, I wrote about the former official at Turning Point Action who comported himself as a champion of election integrity before pleading guilty to election fraud.

Certified hypocrites abound.

And now, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that scandal-plagued conservative activist James O’Keefe and pro-MAGA content creator Cam Higby have been charged with various crimes over an alleged plot involving fake identities presented to election workers in an effort to sow doubt about the integrity of next week’s midterms.

Per MPR News:

Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday said they charged conservative provocateur James O’Keefe and another man with felonies for unlawful voting and identity theft for filming themselves misrepresenting their identities to election judges during the Minnesota Aug. 11 primary.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said they were alerted by the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office that James O’Keefe, Cameron Higby and others were trying to undermine the state’s vouching system.

Videos posted by O’Keefe’s operation show them wearing burkas outside precincts during the primary. Moriarty said the voter names they used included some residents who were dead and at least one who voted.

Here’s the way O’Keefe’s operation recently defended the effort:

In a press release in August, O’Keefe’s group, which calls itself the “Justice League,” said the people in the video “did not cast ballots. The investigation was intended to test the limits of Minnesota’s vouching law and document how election workers apply it on Election Day.”

Trump has gone on several racist rants about Somali immigrants in Minnesota, accusing them of engaging in fraud and other criminal behavior — often sounding every bit like a klansman attempting to stoke a race war.

On Monday, he claimed that the “only way” Republican candidate Michele Tafoya can lose her Senate race in Minnesota is if liberals “cheat.” That’s the context for O’Keefe and Higby’s alleged scheme, which Media Matters recently described in more detail:

In August, O’Keefe and other right-wing content creators affiliated with his Citizen Justice League descended on Minnesota to attack the state’s voter voucher system, claiming to be registered voters in various precincts and asking poll workers if they would be able to vouch for several unregistered individuals who lacked photo ID.

Videos of the stunts, produced by Higby, O’Keefe, and Rubin, make the broad claim that Minnesota’s voucher system, which allows for a registered voter to “vouch” for the identities of up to eight unregistered individuals living in the same precinct, is a natural source for fraud.

Media Matters noted that some of the footage has been promoted by the Trump administration and conservative media. And the racism involved was unsubtle:

In the videos from O’Keefe and Higby, the pair dressed in what O’Keefe described as “full traditional Muslim attire” and adopted fake accents to impersonate registered voters and ask if they could vouch for several friends or family members.

For the record, making false voter fraud claims and being forced to walk them back is not new for O’Keefe.

But intimidation appears to be the primary intent here. O’Keefe is known for launching bogus sting operations that conservatives can use to peddle MAGA propaganda, potentially placing their targets in various kinds of danger. In 2024, I wrote about how one such operation apparently fueled violent threats toward staff at a shelter for immigrants in Arizona.

Now, Republicans are attempting to conjure up voter fraud claims to gin up backlash over a crucial Senate race in which polling has consistently shown the Democrat with an edge. And Minnesota’s Hennepin County apparently isn’t standing for it.

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Tennessee’s Brent Taylor has joined the list of political candidates whose campaigns have been rocked by sexting scandals this year.

Taylor, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump, is running in a House district that white Tennessee Republicans — acting on the president’s behest — gerrymandered in ways that carved up the state’s only majority-Black district, seemingly ensuring that the district would be represented by a white Republican.

And when all is said and done, Taylor may indeed cruise to victory over his well-known progressive opponent, fellow state Sen. Justin Pearson. But Taylor’s acknowledged history of sending unsolicited nudes has thrown a wrench into his campaign.

Taylor faced mockery and fierce rebuke this week for responding to an exposé by describing the nude photos — some of which he apparently sent in his 50s — as “youthful indiscretions.” According to the Nashville Scene:

Multiple sources say they had received or seen nude photos from Taylor, who is running for U.S. Congress in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District. Taylor acknowledged to the Scene that he had sent nude photos in the past but dismissed them as mistakes that have since been forgiven by his wife Kimberly.

“As I near 60 years old, the expiration date has come and gone on any of my youthful indiscretions,” Taylor tells the Scene when asked about a history of texting nude pictures. “Whatever story you think you’ve got, my wife is well aware of and we’ve worked through it a long time ago. My god and my wife have forgiven me, and I would consider everyone else doing the same.”

As the outlet noted, these were hardly “youthful indiscretions”:

One individual — who requested anonymity, citing fear of retaliation — says they received an unsolicited nude picture from Taylor as recently as 2021, before he was elected to the state Senate. A second eyewitness source independently confirmed the nude photos sent by Taylor. At that time, Taylor was 53.

Despite his evidently revealing nature, Taylor — who has spoken out against sexual harassment in politics — has declined to say how many times he has sent unsolicited nudes. And Pearson is pouncing on the scandal:

I'm disturbed to learn of Brent Taylor’s pattern of sending unsolicited nude photos to multiple women.

The fact that he would dismiss his behavior as “youthful indiscretions" despite it happening recently, in his fifties, & while he held government office is ridiculous.

More pic.twitter.com/ks94PtLsGp

— Justin J. Pearson (@Justinjpearson) October 27, 2026

To reiterate, Taylor is still headed into Election Day with the advantage manufactured for him through gerrymandering. But his campaign is providing yet more fodder to point out the hypocrisy of a MAGA movement that claims to promote Christian values but celebrates and enables men known for sex predation, such as Trump.

The Tennessee Republican has given liberals a gift this election season: “My opponent was sending unsolicited nudes while on the doorstep of qualifying for the Denny’s senior menu” is one hell of a closing argument against someone who shouldn’t be anywhere near a congressional seat.

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The hive of bigotry buzzing around Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a national security threat. And it should be a top investigative target for Democrats if they retake the House.

Democrats are already pondering how to force the scandal-plagued former Fox News host from his Cabinet post if they prevail in next week’s midterm elections. But even if that happens, House committees will need to address the culture of abject bigotry Hegseth has enabled at the Pentagon, particularly his permission of white supremacist ideologies — given that officials in various administrations, including Donald Trump’s first one, have deemed white supremacists as the country’s biggest domestic security threat.

CNN is out with a new report showing that this racist rot has reached the marrow at the Defense Department. The report homes in on deranged social media posts from Ryan Higgins, a top faith adviser at the Pentagon who CNN said has helped shape some of Hegseth’s unhinged speeches. Per the report:

On his social media platforms, CNN found Higgins defended a video President Donald Trump shared depicting the Obamas as apes, said same-sex marriage was “abominable,” and speculated about how many abortions former Vice President Kamala Harris might have had, citing her age and claiming she had a “long record of sleeping around.”

He’s also asserted that the “Separation of Church and State does not exist” and has posted extreme rhetoric about immigrants.

“They act like barbarians, killing and raping our white women,” he wrote in one post responding to tabloid coverage of sexual crimes allegedly committed by immigrants in Europe.

I recently wrote about how MAGA world has borrowed from groups like the Ku Klux Klan in using the threat of rape as an anti-immigrant scare tactic. CNN’s report cites numerous other bigoted posts from Higgins that portray him as an election denier and someone who loathes the idea of women aspiring toward anything but baby-making, thinks LGBTQ people are satanic and — crucially — believes brown Muslim people are the scourge of the earth.

Yet when asked for comment by CNN, a Pentagon spokesperson touted Higgins and the job he’s doing:

Higgins did not respond to requests for comment on this story. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense called Higgins a “valued member of the Secretary’s team” who “does an outstanding job serving as a senior adviser.”

“He has been completely focused on the spiritual health of our troops and the historic establishment of the Office of Religious Affairs,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.

Parnell did not respond specifically to detailed questions about Higgins’ posts reviewed by CNN.

These are the kinds of people surrounding Hegseth as he has expended Americans’ lives and tax dollars to carry out what he has described as a 21st-century “American crusade.”

My colleague Steve Benen has written about Hegseth’s disturbing relationship with the Rev. Douglas Wilson, who has spread Islamophobia, advocated for repealing women’s voting rights and tried to glorify chattel slavery. And I’ve written about Joshua Haymes, another pastor associated with Hegseth who shares those same wretched views.

Probing this web of influence and the ways it’s infecting the Defense Department should be a priority for Democrats. And the good thing, politically speaking, is that — thanks to Hegseth — it has never been easier for liberals to help voters draw a connection between this kind of bigotry and the nation’s biggest woes.

A major reason Americans are paying more for everything from gas to groceries these days is that a bunch of Islamophobic, hypermasculine hate-mongers in Trump’s regime are choosing to play war games with the Islamic Republic of Iran — and apparently failing.

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